Hunger Reads: GQ's Robert Draper on His Favorite Political Reads

I fell into the slipstream of politics when I began a book on then-President George W. Bush in 2004, and it has done a bad number on my literary intake ever since. I’ve got entire bookshelves devoted to the likes of the Southern Strategy, Clinton’s impeachment, health care, the war in Iraq and Mormonism. This as a cautionary tale—the Boys on the Bus do not a moveable feast make, culturally speaking.

Timothy Crouse’s aforementioned expose’ of presidential campaign journalism stands as an exception to the rule that literature and politics don’t mix. Here are a few others:

What It Takes, by Richard Ben Cramer: Widely regarded as a feat of access—Cramer got pretty much every presidential candidate in the 1988 sweepstakes to grant him fly-on-the-wall status, a first and a last in the annals of political reporting—this mammoth work is also gorgeously written. In lesser hands, Joe Biden and Robert Dole would have come off as droning predictables. Cramer renders Joe and the Bobster likable, textured, pungent.

Ronald Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime, by Lou Cannon: Robert Caro justly receives hosannas for his titanic four-volumes-and-counting LBJ biography. But Cannon achieves something even more difficult in this landmark biography. As a California reporter who covered Reagan’s governorship, Cannon then moved to Washington to report on his presidency and proceeded to churn out this beautifully crafted, deeply reported and tough-but-fair tomemore or less as events occurred. Other Reagan bios will be written, but they will not be necessary. Cannon’s got him.

All the King’s Men, by Robert Penn Warren: I’ve saved the best for last. Everyone should read Warren’s one great novel (such a mystery why his others could not approach this one), but particularly those who are politiphiles. Yes, the author’s protagonist Willie Stark is an unapologetic copy of the great Louisiana demagogue Governor Huey P. Long. But what amazes is how, 66 years after its publication, All the King’s Men remains one of the most searing peepholes into the slick & sleazy world of officeholding. The sycophants, the comers, the lifers, the aides both trusted and not—Warren’s got them all nailed...and this from a college professor whose sole access to state politics was what he read in the newspapers. The novel’s opener is the best first chapter I’ve ever read.

Robert Draper is a GQ correspondent and the author of Dead Certain: The Presidency of George W. Bush and Do Not Ask What Good We Do: Inside the U.S. House of Representatives.

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